28. Amalia #2
“What percentage is the pain?” he asks, and despite everything, I smile at the way he chooses to ask it.
This man lives inside his percentages and calculations.
“About sixty percent.”
Something in my answer makes his shoulders drop, and slowly, so incredibly slowly, he pulls back, only to press forward again.
My mouth falls open every time he does it, and without realizing it, I begin to move my hips in the rhythm he’s setting.
My hands find his arms, the tattoo with the Chinese symbols on his forearm, the place where his veins sit raised and taut as he grips my hips.
A low sound leaves him and a smile spreads across my entire face, watching him like this: unhurried, present, like his mind is entirely and completely here.
He lets his head fall back, his hands tighten on my hips, and whatever last thread of control he was holding onto releases. And I love this image of him, this free, unguarded version, so wrapped up in me that reason doesn’t reach him anymore.
In this moment, Silas is only listening to what his chest tells him, and maybe because I’m emotional and overwhelmed, I feel tears gathering behind my eyes. Because I understand with a quiet terror that I love this man.
How he became my safety and my calm. How he seems willing to move mountains just to make sure I’m happy. How he looks, right now, like he’s found something he didn’t know he was looking for.
Probably sensing that the pain has eased from my face, he lifts one of my legs and drapes it over his hip, deepening the angle.
One hand travels back down to my center, and even though I flinch slightly at the contact, the sensation of his fingers there makes me pull him closer, makes my thighs open farther.
The moan that escapes me makes me grateful we’re on the top floor.
“Your pussy is strangling me, baby.” And this man, this gorgeous man, moans my name. “Amalia, I need you to come, and I need you to do it now.”
I feel the tension building and building, and through the haze in my mind, I move my hand to the place where he keeps thrusting into me, and I touch him.
“Amalia.”
“I like the way you say my name.”
He increases the pace, that vein in his neck throbbing, and I find myself rising up to straddle his lap.
My lips find that vein and he tenses beneath me, a sharp breath leaving him, and the new angle combined with the low sound of his voice in my ear and this devastating fullness makes me come so hard I’m fairly certain everyone on this floor now knows Silas’s name.
Two more movements and he comes undone, his head dropping to the base of my throat.
I don’t know how many minutes we stay like that — me tracing slow lines across his back, him pressing his lips to every inch of my neck and chest, but then I hear him whisper against my skin.
“What percentage is the pain?”
I smile like an idiot, because in this moment, even though there’s still some discomfort, his body next to mine has dissolved most of it.
“Twenty percent,” I tell him.
“Good.”
He gets up and disappears into the bathroom for a moment, returning with a warm damp cloth that he uses to clean gently between my thighs.
I notice a faint trace of blood on the sheets, but it’s nothing alarming, so I follow him into the bathroom where we shower together.
His hands turn me slowly so my back is to him, his lips find the base of my neck, and he murmurs, “I don’t know how I’m going to manage three days without you.”
I think my heart grows wings, because I don’t know how I’ll manage without him either, but I say nothing and lose myself in his touch beneath the warm water.
His palms massage my shoulders slowly, moving down to my hips. And even though he already finished, his erection makes its presence known again, and I turn to face him.
His lips are slightly parted, his eyes half closed, and with water tracing every line of him, he looks like something I imagined.
His right hand slides down to my center, parting me slowly, agonizingly slowly, and even though the touch makes me flinch, I find myself anchoring my hands on him and opening my thighs regardless.
“I can’t stop touching you,” he tells me in a rough voice. “It’s maddening. A fucking compulsion.” His eyes drop to where his fingers are pressing inside me.
That tangle of fireworks that detonated earlier begins to tremble again low in my belly, and I let my head fall back.
Within a minute, I cry his name when he steals a third orgasm from me, and I’m grateful for his arms because my knees nearly give out entirely.
Then, in the quiet that follows, he washes me and dries me.
While I change into one of his T-shirts, my eyes catch on a row of vintage watches lined up across the top of his dresser, each one on its own little stand, sorted by leather strap color and, if my tired brain isn’t lying, by age too.
For the love of Euclid. By the time I tear myself away, Silas has stripped the bed and remade it, and even though my body is exhausted, my stomach reminds me I haven’t eaten anything.
When I walk into the living room, he freezes with food in his hands at the sight of me wearing his clothes.
“I didn’t have anything to change into,” I whisper, embarrassed because this is a new level of intimacy between us that I don’t quite know how to hold.
He sets the plates down on the table and crosses the room toward me, his body folding around mine.
“You still smell like lilac,” he whispers, and my heart turns completely over.
For a few moments he just holds me, like he’s trying to memorize the feeling of my body against his, then with one last slow breath into my hair, he steers me toward the table.
I love that I don’t feel the need to fill the silence between us. After we finish eating, we move to our usual corner of the living room.
Before I can sit on the sofa, he gestures for me to wait.
He lights the fireplace, sets my hot chocolate within reach, and then sits in the corner where I would normally settle, making room for me between his legs.
I lean back against his chest, resting my head on him, and he draws a blanket over us both.
It’s comfortable. It’s warm.
I don’t last fifteen minutes before I’m pulled under into a deep, dreamless sleep.
I don’t know how long I sleep. I only know that at some point I wake up in his bed, alone, with a small note on the pillow beside me.
Above it sits a key, and my heart swells all over again at the gesture.
It isn’t a declaration of love. But it’s something made official, and I can’t help smiling as I run my hand over the small piece of metal.
Three days, Amalia. You can last three days without him.